Google Gmail Restored After Service Outage Reported

Google users in the United States and the United Kingdom woke up Tuesday morning to find their Gmail service down for a number of hours. In a blog posting, Google executives wrote that the Gmail problem stemmed from a service outage. Google Gmail accounts returned after about two-and-a-half hours.

Google's Gmail went down for two-and-a-half hours during the morning of Feb.
24, although Google reported that it restored full Gmail service in the United
States and Europe.
"We're actively investigating the source of the issue and will share
more information with our users as soon as we have it," Andrew Kovacs, a Google
spokesperson, said in an e-mail.

The outage started at 9:30 am GMT.
Reports stated that some users in parts of the United
States, Europe and Asia
were affected.
"We're working very hard to solve the problem and we're really sorry
for the inconvenience," Acacio Cruz, Gmail site reliability manager, wrote
on the official Google blog
shortly after the outage began. "Those users in the U.S.
and UK who have
enabled Gmail offline through Gmail Labs should be able to access their inbox,
although they won't be able to send or receive emails."

A later blog update said that service had been restored, that engineers were
investigating the problem and that certain users would have to take an extra
step before being able to access their mail.
"Before you can access your Gmail, you may be asked to fill in what's
called a 'CAPTCHA' which asks you to type in a word or some letters before you
can proceed," Cruz wrote in the update. "This is perfectly normal
when you repeatedly request access to your email account, so please do go
through the extra step-it's just to verify you are who you say you are."

Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.